Thirty-five years later, Mr. Kissinger, the consummate fawner, was once more able to sway a president with faux deference.

He was an employee of the Cafe and a major fawner of the Cafe owner, Pereira.

"Rudy has to understand I'm speaking as a representative of a very pro-cop district, trying to help the good cops stand up against the bad cop," he said, mystically bracing his views by playing the lunch-hour fawner before constituents.

The old man, disgusted by what in his suspicious nature he considered a shameless and fulsome puff of Mr Pecksniff, which was a part of Tom's hired service and in which he was determined to persevere, set him down at once for a deceitful, servile, miserable fawner.